The cue sports competition at the 2009 World Games, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball (a pool discipline) and snooker, took place from 22 to 26 July, at the Chung Cheng Martial Arts Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. [1]
* Host nation (Chinese Taipei)
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Great Britain (GBR) | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 2 |  Germany (GER) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
 Netherlands (NED) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| 4 |  Chinese Taipei (TPE)* | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 5 |  Austria (AUT) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
 Sweden (SWE) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | |
| 7 |  France (FRA) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
 Italy (ITA) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
 United Arab Emirates (UAE) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
| Totals (9 entries) | 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 | |
| Event | Gold | Silver | Bronze |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three-cushion billiards – men's singles [3] [4] [5] | Dick Jaspers (NED) | Torbjörn Blomdahl (SWE) | Marco Zanetti (ITA) |
| Nine-ball – men's singles [3] [6] | Ralf Souquet (GER) | Yang Ching-shun (TPE) | Stephan Cohen (FRA) |
| Nine-ball – women's singles [3] [7] | Allison Fisher (GBR) | Jasmin Ouschan (AUT) | Lin Yuan-chun (TPE) |
| Snooker – men's singles [3] [8] [9] | Nigel Bond (GBR) | David Grace (GBR) | Mohammed Shehab (UAE) |
Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions. Cue sports are also collectively referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some varieties of English.
Snooker is a cue sport played on a rectangular billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six pockets: one at each corner and one in the middle of each long side. First played by British Army officers stationed in India in the second half of the 19th century, the game is played with 22 balls, comprising a white cue ball, 15 red balls and 6 other balls—a yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black—collectively called 'the colours'. Using a snooker cue, the individual players or teams take turns to strike the cue ball to pot other balls in a predefined sequence, accumulating points for each successful pot and for each foul committed by the opposing player or team. An individual frame of snooker is won by the player who has scored the most points, and a snooker match ends when a player wins a predetermined number of frames.
Efren Manalang Reyes, popularly known by the nicknames "Bata" and "the Magician", is a Filipino professional pool player, who is widely regarded as the greatest pool player of all time, and especially famed for his skill at the challenging one-pocket discipline. In 2003, he was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame.
Golf billiards is a pocket billiards game usually played for money. Unlike the majority of such games, it allows more than two people to play without compromises or rule changes. The game borrows from the outdoor game of golf, which is historically related to the cue sports. It is usually played on 10-foot or 12-foot snooker tables as their size and structure are more appropriate. In 2006 the Billiard Congress of America commented it was more popular than snooker in the United States.
A billiard table or billiards table is a bounded table on which cue sports are played. In the modern era, all billiards tables provide a flat surface usually made of quarried slate, that is covered with cloth, and surrounded by vulcanized rubber cushions, with the whole thing elevated above the floor. More specific terms are used for specific sports, such as snooker table and pool table, and different-sized billiard balls are used on these table types. An obsolete term is billiard board, used in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The following is a glossary of traditional English-language terms used in the three overarching cue sports disciplines: carom billiards referring to the various carom games played on a billiard table without pockets; pool, which denotes a host of games played on a table with six pockets; and snooker, played on a large pocket table, and which has a sport culture unto itself distinct from pool. There are also games such as English billiards that include aspects of multiple disciplines.
Alejandro Salvador "Alex" Pagulayan is a Filipino-born Canadian professional pool player. His nickname is "the Lion", given to him by Paul Thornley, Canadian snooker player whom he credits as his mentor. Pagulayan is considered one of the best pool players of all time as well as one of the best one-pocket player of all time. He was born in Cabagan, Isabela, Philippines and was raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Pagulayan represented the Philippines in the mid-2000s and in 2012, he began carrying the Canadian flag in international tournaments again.
A trick shot is a shot played on a billiards table, which seems unlikely or impossible or requires significant skill. Trick shots frequently involve the balls organized in ways that do not correspond to normal play, such as balls being in a straight line, or use props such as extra cues or a triangle that would not be allowed on the table during a game. As an organized cue sports discipline, trick shot competition is known as artistic pool.
The English-originating version of eight-ball pool, also known as English pool, English eight-ball, blackball, or simply reds and yellows, is a pool game played with sixteen balls on a small pool table with six pockets. It originated in the United Kingdom and is played in the Commonwealth countries such as Australia and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland it is usually called simply "pool".
Carom billiards and pool are two types of cue sports or billiards-family games, which as a general class are played with a stick called a cue which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiard table bounded by rubber cushions attached to the confining rails of the table.
The cue sports competition at the 2005 World Games, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball, and snooker, took place from 20 to 24 July at the Saalbau Bottrop in Bottrop, Germany. 64 competitors, from 32 nations, participated in the tournament.
The men's singles three-cushion billiards competition at the 2009 World Games took place from 22 to 26 July 2009 at the Chung Cheng Martial Arts Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The men's singles nine-ball competition at the 2009 World Games took place from 22 to 26 July 2009 at the Chung Cheng Martial Arts Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The women's singles nine-ball competition at the 2009 World Games took place from 22 to 26 July 2009 at the Chung Cheng Martial Arts Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The men's singles snooker competition at the 2009 World Games took place between 22 and 26 July at the Chung Cheng Martial Arts Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The cue sports competition at the 2001 World Games, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball and snooker, took place from 22 to 26 August at the Selion Plaza in Akita, Japan. 62 competitors, from 24 nations, participated in the tournament.
Cue sports, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball and snooker, were introduced as World Games sports for men and for women also at the World Games 2001 in Akita.
Cha Yu-ram is a South Korean professional pool player.
The cue sports competition at the 2013 World Games, including three-cushion billiards, nine-ball and snooker, took place from July 26 to 30 at the Unidad Deportiva Alberto Galindo in Cali, Colombia.
Robby Foldvari is an Australian player of snooker, English billiards, and pool. He is a multi-year World Billiards Champion, and a national-level champion in both snooker and nine-ball pool (2012), as well as a World Games competitor (2013). Outside of competition, he is a coach and television commentator. Foldvari won the Australian Open 8 Ball Pool Championship (2015), completing the royal flush of national titles in every cuesports discipline. In June 2016 he won the Australian Open 10 ball Pool Championship